The Killing Forest (11 page)

W
hat the hell kind of place is this?” Nymand yelled after he'd stepped out of the car and peered down the rows of identical gravestones.

“It's a private graveyard from back when the old orphanage owned the forest,” Louise explained. She led Roskilde's deputy commissioner to the body.

Nymand had headed the investigation when Frederik's young niece had been kidnapped; it was the beginning of a family tragedy. She hadn't spoken to him since, but she caught something in his eye that told her he knew about the episode at the gamekeeper's.

“It'll be half an hour or so before emergency and the techs arrive,” he said. Meanwhile he wanted to know how they'd found the body.

Eik stood a few meters away, lighting a cigarette. “It was the dog; he started digging. But Charlie is experienced—he knows when to stop.” Eik sounded a bit proud as he stuck the pack of cigarettes in his pocket and blew smoke out.

“In other words, he ruined the crime scene,” Nymand stated sullenly. “Why the hell isn't that dog leashed?”

Louise was afraid that her partner would lock horns with Nymand. Criticizing Eik's new best friend wasn't the way to get on his good side; she'd found that out. But he merely tilted his head.

“If the dog had been on a leash, there'd be no crime scene,” he said drily. “And if you walk over and look at the grave, you'll see that he only dug down to the hand. I'm the one who uncovered the arm, and we haven't touched the rest of the grave.”

Nymand grunted.

“Charlie's a police dog, not an amateur,” Eik continued. Louise had to look away to keep herself from smiling.

“There's probably not much left that can help us anyway,” the deputy commissioner admitted. He joined his men.

Louise followed and asked if there was anything more they needed to know before she and Eik took the dogs back to the manor house.

Nymand shook his head. “But we need to talk to Frederik.” He looked over at Camilla's husband, standing in the background with his hands in his pockets.

“You might get more out of talking to his manager,” Louise said. “Tønnesen has been around for decades. Frederik has only lived here the last twenty years.”

“It's possible we'll wait to search the area until early tomorrow,” Nymand said, as if he hadn't heard her.

Louise nodded and looked toward the grave.

“But of course we'll secure the crime scene right now,” he continued, “and take the remains in to Forensics when the techs finish tomorrow.” He gazed around. “We probably should cordon off the area.”

From whom? Louise thought. She told him that she was staying with Camilla that weekend, and she mentioned the hit-and-run and the missing boy seen in the forest.

“Frederik,” Nymand called out, ignoring her. “Can we talk in the morning?”

“I can stay out here. I'd like to help if I can.”

Nymand shook his head violently. Clearly he didn't want any outsiders contaminating the crime scene. “Go on. I'll call if I need you.”

Louise noticed that Frederik hesitated.

“We're taking the dogs back,” Eik yelled. “Drive on ahead and grab a few beers. I could sure use one, anyway.”

Camilla lay sleeping on the sofa when they returned. Out in the kitchen, it was obvious that the boys had made toasted sandwiches. Sliced bread, ham, and cheese were scattered around the counter beside the big toaster oven, which smelled of melted cheese. The two boys flew down the stairs.

“Where've you been?” Markus called before he had even reached the kitchen.

Louise and Frederik glanced at each other. They had agreed to tell the boys what had happened, but without making a big deal about it.

“Eik and Louise found a dead person out in the forest,” Frederik began.

“Possibly someone who took their own life.” Louise lied to make it sound less dramatic, but she could see it didn't work. “The police are there, and we really don't know much yet.”

“So maybe there's a murderer in the forest?” Markus asked, his eyes wide as he looked from Eik to Louise to Frederik.

“But it is a murder, right?” Jonah said.

She spread her hands in exasperation. “Boys, it's way too early to be certain of anything. But yes, it's possible that someone hid a body out in the forest. It doesn't necessarily mean that the person was killed here.”

Jonas's shoulders slumped; Markus gave the chair in front of him a push, the legs stuttering across the floor. Obviously, both of them were uneasy with what they'd heard.

“Could it have something to do with what happened to Mom?” Markus asked.

Louise quickly shook her head. “No, definitely not.” She walked over and put her arm around his shoulder, stroking his hair lightly. “This probably happened years ago. Long before you moved here. And nobody can say this is where it happened.”

Everyone seemed to take in what had been said.

“Can we take the big bottle of cola up with us?” Markus asked Frederik. With that, the boys' moods lifted, as if the corpse no longer had anything to do with them.

Louise smiled when they grabbed two glasses out of the cupboard and hit Frederik up for the bag of chips on the top shelf.

“Is there anything you'd like?” he asked after the boys had gone back upstairs. “You hungry?”

Louise shook her head and suggested they make a few liver pâté sandwiches. She felt a bit dizzy, so she sat down while Frederik rounded everything up.

First the session with Bitten, Thomsen threatening her, ordering her to stay away. Then Camilla being run down in the forest. And now this. Thoughts swirled in her head. After a few bites, she pushed her plate away. “I think I'll lie down,” she said, even though it was only a few minutes past eleven. “Are you going back to town?” She looked at Eik.

Frederik quickly intervened. “You're welcome to stay. It might be best, if the police need both of you.”

Eik needed no encouragement. “Great. I just need to find out what to do about feeding the dog. I'm not nearly as well organized as Jonas, who brought along a doggy bag for Dina.”

Frederik pointed to the refrigerator. “We have steaks in there, so if Charlie isn't a vegetarian, you're welcome to give them to him.”

Louise had her own bureau drawer in the guest room, with everything she needed for an unexpected visit. Camilla had arranged it—she felt obligated to do so, since she had moved out on her friend in Frederiksberg.

The only time Louise had slept with Eik had been in this guest room, the night after Camilla and Frederik's wedding. They drank tons of champagne and kissed for the first time. Louise had no idea how she had gotten up the stairs and into bed, but now she suddenly remembered every second of that night with him, the feel of his skin, the stubble on his face, his hands.

In the bathroom, the thought of his caresses aroused her. She rinsed her face off when she heard him come up the steps and walk into the guest room.

Eik had confided in her that night. He told her about the woman he had lost, about sailing with her and two friends in the Mediterranean during his vacation, then quarreling with her outside Rome. He'd left the boat and returned to Copenhagen, where he heard about the accident. Sailors had found their rented boat drifting around a small harbor. Their two friends had drowned, but his girlfriend had disappeared without a trace. No one had seen her since. It had left a black hole inside Eik, into which he sometimes fell. Once in a while it was hard to pull himself out of it.

Eik knocked on the bathroom door. “Are you okay in there?”

Louise turned off the water. “I'm coming,” she said, and dried her face.

L
ouise had been awake for a while when her phone rang. She hadn't had much sleep. She felt ashamed. Eik had been very understanding when, in the middle of all the warmth and fondling, she suddenly had rolled up into a ball and begun crying. Much later, when the tears stopped, she told him the rest of the story. About the sorrow and shame she had been living with her entire life. He stroked her back as she talked about Thomsen and his gang, who'd kept their claws in Klaus even though he wanted out.

At one point in the night, she turned to him and slid her hand over his chest, down over his prominent ribs, his hip bone, his groin, but when she felt him growing and stiffening, images from the gamekeeper's barn entered her head. She turned away from him.

“Don't you think you should speak with someone about what happened?” he'd whispered.

Louise had in fact considered making an appointment with a crisis counselor; Jakobsen was his name. Homicide had been using him for several years, and she'd gone to him before. She knew Eik was right, and she decided to contact Jakobsen, but first she was going to find the boy. And also get to the bottom of what happened the night Klaus died.

She reached down to the floor and picked up her buzzing phone.

“There's an old woman standing here. She's in our way, and I can't get hold of Frederik Sachs-Smith,” Nymand said without introduction. “You're going to have to get her out of here.”

Louise sat up. It was almost seven thirty; she must have gotten some sleep after all. “Where are you?” Eik stirred.

“Out at the graves of the girls. You
did
find a body out here yesterday evening, presumably a woman, and now we have to fine-comb the entire area. We can't have this woman hanging around in the middle of it all.”

“What do you know about the body?” Louise asked.

“We don't know a damn thing as long as this old woman prevents us from doing our job!”

“We're on our way.”

Camilla sat staring out the kitchen window. Her hands held a cup of coffee, while her thoughts were out in the forest with the boy who wouldn't come home.

Besides everywhere else in her body that hurt, she had a crick in her neck because Frederik had let her sleep on the sofa all night. When he'd come in to say good morning, she quickly gulped all the pills he handed her. He told her about the corpse Eik's dog had found out by the girls' graves. She'd been very annoyed that he hadn't woken her up so she could go along, but he dismissed her by saying that no one had really known what was out there, and anyway, she'd needed sleep.

She turned when she heard Louise's footsteps on the stairs. She assumed that her friend and Eik had slept together, and she was expecting her to be radiant, but Camilla's smile disappeared when Louise walked in the room. She looked harried, with dark rings under her eyes.

“What's going on?” Camilla asked. She groaned when she stood to get another cup. “You could have woken me up. I'd like to have gone out there with you.”

“Can you get hold of your manager?” Louise said. “The police are out there, and they want to inspect the site, but Elinor has planted herself on one of the old graves and refuses to move. The police want someone to take her away.”

“What the hell is she doing out there?” Camilla said. “And what happened yesterday?”

Louise shrugged. “The dogs ran around, and before we knew what they were up to, Charlie had dug down and found a hand.”

“Christ! What is the deal with this place? If I'd known there were hit-and-run drivers, Vikings, ghosts, and double graves, Frederik would have had to move in with me, back in the city.”

“We don't know if it is a double grave,” Louise said. “We really don't know very much yet, only that there are bones that shouldn't be there.”

Eik walked up behind her with a bad case of morning hair, heading for the Nespresso machine. “We have time for a cup?”

“Only if you bring it along,” Louise said. She was halfway to the hall to put on her shoes.

“I'm going with you,” Camilla yelled. She'd called Tønnesen, but he hadn't answered. “I'll take care of Elinor.”

She looked out into the yard. Dina lay stretched out under a tree. Charlie trotted around with his nose to the ground, tail wagging. “Should we shut them in, or do you want to take them along?”

“Nymand's team will have their own dogs out there, so it's probably best that ours stay here,” Louise said. She looked over at Eik.

“Sure.” He called the two dogs in. “You don't let an old circus horse smell the sawdust if you're not going to let him dance.”

E
linor looked like a tiny pawn on an enormous chessboard. She leaned on her cane, a bowed old woman standing on the grave as if someone had nailed her to it.

“Hi, Elinor,” Camilla called out.

Morning dew still covered the grass in the forest meadow. The graves were ringed with dark gravel all the way around. They had probably been well cared for at one time, she thought, but now bushes had overtaken several of them. The low hedge from long ago, probably a windbreak, had grown out of shape, and long tufts of grass had sprouted up on the graves themselves. The entire area had been neglected and was fast returning to nature.

“The police need her out of the way,” Louise repeated.

She walked over to join Nymand and his crime scene technicians. They had carefully dug down beside the body, and now they were pushing a plate in underneath to lift it out. The corpse and the earth around it would be taken in for examination.

Shadows from the treetops danced on the earth in front of Camilla's feet; ground mist rose from a small hollow at the edge of the forest, just beyond the old gnarled tree. She shivered in the cool morning breeze.

“The wagons are rolling on the Death Trail,” the old woman mumbled.

“How is she in the way?” Camilla asked the dog handler, who stood a few meters away. “When you're focused on the graves over there.”

“You have to get her to move so we can do our job,” was all he said. He stared openly at her black-and-blue face.

Elinor kept mumbling. Camilla held a hand out to her, but she ignored it. Camilla lowered her hand and stepped back. The earth was dark where the old woman stood; there was no green grass. It looked as if someone had been digging around.

“Listen, goddamn it, she's not doing this just to bother you,” Camilla said. She hobbled over to the policeman. “Instead of standing there looking like an old grouch, you could walk over to her and take a look. The dirt's different from the other graves.”

“Yeah, maybe! Except it's hard to see as long as she's standing on it.”

Camilla looked around for Nymand.

Elinor stirred. Hunched over, looking down at the ground, she turned and walked away from the grave. Camilla followed her. Now she was convinced that Elinor only wanted to point out the grave to her. Once she was sure that Camilla understood, she moved away.

Camilla hurried to follow the old lady. It wasn't just the morning chill bringing out goose bumps on her skin; she had a vague feeling that something was about to happen. Something not at all nice.

Elinor strode past two gravestones and stopped beside the third. The grave looked like all the others, the same gray, simple stone plate set slightly crooked in the ground. Camilla crouched down and was about to read when a man's voice boomed from behind and startled her.

“Got something over here!” said a tall, husky policeman. Camilla noticed that the dog handler had straightened up, now that his dog showed interest where Elinor had stood. Nymand and his men rushed over.

“What's happening?” she yelled. She put a hand on Elinor's arm. “I'm going back to see what this is all about.”

But as she was about to turn, Elinor grabbed her. “The wagons are rolling on the Death Trail.”

Technicians in a blue van backed up to the grave where Elinor had been standing. Two men in white coveralls carefully began scraping the earth away.

“Positive!” someone yelled.

Camilla was rushing toward them when suddenly she felt a strong hand on the back of her shoulder. “Stay here!” a policeman said.

“What's going on? And take your hand off me!” She squirmed.

“It looks like they found another body,” he said, letting go of her.

“You mean, a body buried there where Elinor was?”

“It looks that way.”

Camilla froze a second before whirling toward Elinor, her feet planted on the grave behind them. Their eyes met, then the old woman turned and walked toward the forest.

Camilla called her name. She wanted to run after her, but the pain in her legs and the husky policeman stopped her. “What's that old witch up to?” He stared after her.

Camilla slumped. She looked at the grave the old woman had just left. She heard the dog handler praising his dog, the dog snapping at the snack the man had tossed at him. She sensed the stillness of the forest, though everything around her was in motion. It was as if she were in the middle of a movie set where a mass grave was being uncovered right before her eyes.

“I think there's another grave here you should look at,” she said, pointing.

“Nymand!” the policeman called out across the clearing.

Camilla couldn't move when the officer asked the dog handler to check the grave she'd singled out. She felt she knew what she was about to see.

Her eyes followed the policeman and his dog in slow motion. They stopped at the grave. The dog sniffed around, but it made no noise when it looked up at its handler. He said something to the officer beside Camilla; she couldn't hear what, could only see his mouth moving. She looked back down at the grave.

“Negative,” the officer said.

She grabbed him before he walked away. “There
is
something. Or else she wouldn't have shown us the grave.” She ignored his remark that crime scenes always attract weirdos trying to draw attention to themselves. “She was right a few minutes ago,” Camilla said, pointing to the first grave, which several of the technicians huddled around. The mood was tense. They worked fast, focusing on what was being dug up while speaking in low voices.

Louise came over to her. “It's a young woman. It looks like she's been in the ground only a short time. She probably won't be difficult to identify, if we can find a missing person matching her description.”

“How could this happen?” Camilla whispered. Her chest felt tight; even though she had covered many cases while on the crime desk at
Morgenavisen
, she had never gotten used to the sight of a corpse. “Why are all these bodies showing up here?”

She had to sit down. Her scalp tingled as the blood drained out of her cheeks.

Louise shook her head. She had no answer.

“You have to check the last grave Elinor showed me,” Camilla said. She looked up at her friend. “The dog may not have smelled anything, but I'm sure there's something. It's obvious she wanted us to look there.”

“My guess is that the entire area will be cordoned off. Nymand will call in an archaeologist with knowledge of disturbed sites, who can tell us where someone has been digging recently.” Louise started to walk back to the others.

Camilla followed her. “Who could she be, that woman you just found?”

“It's hard to say. She's young, probably early twenties.”

“What's she look like?”

“Thin, almost naked, long blond hair,” Louise said. “A tattoo around one wrist, another one down by her hip. I couldn't see what it was.”

Camilla stayed in the background as Louise approached the technician and pointed out the final grave Elinor had stood at.

“Can you see how the young woman died?” Camilla asked when Louise returned. But at that moment Nymand ordered everyone to leave.

“We don't want anyone tramping around here until we've secured the entire area,” he yelled. He looked at Camilla.

Several times over the years in her work as a journalist, she'd gone through unsolved cases. She could remember several of them, but none involving the murder of a woman in the Roskilde area.

“This is going to take some time,” Louise said. She put her arm around Camilla's shoulder when she began to sway. “Nymand is calling everything to a halt until an archaeologist looks at the site. He'll also look at the last grave Elinor pointed out to you. If there's been any digging there, the vegetation will probably show it.”

A policeman came over and asked Camilla to leave. “We're securing the entire area,” he said. He nodded toward the forest, as if he expected her to run right in there.

“We're parked over there,” Camilla said. She pointed at the other side of the gnarled tree.

“Then you'll have to walk around,” he said, and he began pushing her.

She'd had enough. She was freezing, her leg hurt, and the whole scene in front of her was surreal. The last thing she wanted to hear was a young officer with a shaved head ordering her around.

“Get your hands off me! This is my forest!”

“That may be, but right now it's a crime scene. So I'm going to have to ask you to leave the area.”

There were probably a thousand things she could have snapped back at him, but instead she sighed and gave up. She just wanted to go home and lie down.

“Eik and I are heading back to town,” Louise said, as she followed her to the car. “We're going into the station to check the national missing person files.”